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4 Digital Marketing Strategy Studies: Formats, Trends, Influencers & Engagement
What spells success in content marketing and other digital disciplines? Is it about the format, the distribution or the timing? Contributor Kelsey Libert explores all the important factors.
Kelsey Libert on February 3, 2015 at 9:00 am
2.3K
MORE
Marketing-Strategy-Studies
Success begins with a good plan. A good plan, in turn, begins with research to understand which solutions might offer the best outcomes for your challenges.
Four new studies have taken on answering the who, what, where, why, and when of digital marketing, giving us insights on the right solutions for brands in every vertical.
Social Content Calendar
A successful marketing effort relies on your ability to deliver the content that audiences want, when they want it.
Figuring out these two components can be challenging, so BuzzStream and Fractl (my employer) looked more closely at sharing among 11 different verticals over six months to find patterns with popular content.
Using BuzzSumo, we tracked 220,000 pieces of content in these formats: how-to articles, lists, what posts, why posts, and videos.
How-To Articles
This format peaks in October, but earns strong shares in August and November as well. How-to articles are the most successful format for the food vertical, earning 37% of all shares during our study period. How-to articles also perform strongly for the news vertical — earning a close second place — with 22% of shares.
Lists
Lists lead content sharing in the summertime. In June through August, this format earns between 17K and 24K shares consistently each month.
Lists are also the strongest content type for the health and travel vertical, and tie for most-shared format in the food vertical.
What Posts
This content type, which typically asks a question or describes an insight such as What Bartenders Actually Think of Your Drink Order, emerged as the riskiest format in our study, earning both the highest high and lowest low in social sharing over six months.
What-posts spiked with 29K shares in October with a surge in the news vertical; however, what-posts rarely received even 1K in shares in June or July.
Why Posts
Content that explains – called why-posts – is the second most-shared format and receives the most attention in the fall, earning an average of 24K shares per month in September, October, and November. Why-posts are particularly strong earners in the lifestyle vertical, accounting for 36% of overall shares.
Videos
Videos earned 27–35% of of shares in the education and entertainment verticals, but ranked last for many other verticals. Video trends may be ones to watch as both Facebook and Twitter compete for stakes in this format.
Evergreen content formats
Lists and why-posts emerged as the highest performing content types overall, earning more than 20% of all shares in the dataset and 22–32% of shares in the Entertainment, News, and Travel verticals.
However, as the chart above suggests, timing plays a big role in content sharing success. For more, we’ve compiled the results by vertical, content type, and month in our Social Content Calendar.
Marketing Trend Report
Marketers are working faster than ever to keep up with the content preferences of digital audiences. A myriad of tools and options have been developed for marketers and advertisers to engage online, and we set out to see which are rising (or falling) in popularity.
Using Google Trends, BuzzStream and Fractl tracked searches for 20 key marketing terms regionally and globally. Here we share results for five terms related to online marketing strategies.
Online Marketing Growth Strategies
Native Advertising: The late bloomer of the bunch, native advertising didn’t earn its first blip on the marketing industry’s radar until March of 2011 and didn’t gain traction until November of the same year. Since then the term has earned a mostly positive rise, peaking in August of 2014 when it briefly surpassed the traffic volume of pay-per-click.
Content Marketing: Pay-per-click earned nine times more search interest than content marketing in January of 2008, but by the end of 2014 the roles were reversed – content marketing now leads with three times the traffic. The switch took place in November of 2012 and the gap has widened continuously ever since.
Social Media Marketing: Searches for social media marketing began in 2007, the same year that Microsoft announced its investment in Facebook. But 2009 marked the beginning of a two-year, 80% rise in interest that has kept the tactic near the top in marketing searches. Searches have fluctuated 20–30% over the past three years, but hit an all time high in April of 2014.
Landing Page Optimization: The most turbulent of trends in the marketing strategy category, landing page optimization garnered its initial and greatest gain in interest between May and June of 2008. The past seven years have been extremely inconsistent for this tactic, with searches rising and falling as much as 55% in a single month. This lack of stability is a signal that the industry has not yet adopted landing page optimization as a staple marketing approach.
Pay-Per-Click: The preferred approach at the start of 2008, searches for the phrase “pay per click” have fallen 68% over the past seven years. The acronym PPC earns more search traffic by volume – an indication of the industry’s embrace of this approach – yet searches for this abbreviation have also fallen 84% during the same time period.
We’ve included the results for all 20 terms in our long-term global analysis and recent regional insights in our Marketing Trend Report.
The Influencer Marketing Discussion Trending On Twitter
After learning which marketing tools and tactics are being most searched, we turned to Twitter to find out what marketing influencers are saying about the industry. BuzzStream and Fractl scraped nearly 5,000 tweets that contained at least one marketing keyword or hashtag from our list:
Media Relations
Influencer Marketing
Digital PR
Outbound Marketing
Brand Recognition
Earned Media
PR
Public Relations
Publicity
Press Release
Then, we utilized Peer Index, Twitonomy, and the Alchemy API to discover the tweet types, sentiments, and key influencers in the discussion.
Marketing Conversation
We found that influencers in the marketing field appear to practice what they preach when it comes to value-added content.
At least half of all tweets in this study included helpful tips or marketing insights, including resources like Entrepreneur’s roundup of Marketing Trends Experts Want You to Avoid and Ragan’s write up on How to Avoid Journalists’ 5 Worst Pitching Peeves.
This was especially true for the emerging keywords “earned media” and “outbound marketing,” in which trends were the dominant category of tweets.
Marketing Influencers
We were surprised to discover that many of the most influential people tweeting with our marketing key terms weren’t people at all – they were brands. 52% of the top influencers we identified using Peer Index included PR teams for brands ranging from commercial companies like Nestlé and Disney, to public information groups like the Los Angeles Police Department and NPR, to industry resources like PR News and Help A Reporter Out.
Of the percentage of influencers that are individuals, at least 41% are in leadership or consulting positions. Job titles like Director, CEO, CMO, and Consultant dominated the list, followed by people in writing, blogging, and strategist roles.
Our full dataset of tweets and influencers is available to download with our findings on Influencer Marketing.
Twitter Engagement Unmasked
Finally, a fascinating new study from Stone Temple rounds out the research that caught my eye this month. In their research on Twitter engagement, 1.94 million tweets revealed that social authority can have a great deal of influence over how various messaging tactics will engage followers.
StoneTemple Twitter Engagement Images Favorites
One of the most striking examples from their finding concerns the use of images. At the lowest authority levels, photos and graphics can earn up to 12X more favorites than tweets without images. Similarly, Low Authority accounts also earn the most RTs by employing images – up to 9X as many in the very lowest category.
In terms of both favorites and RTs, engagement drops off sharply for Twitter accounts in the moderate social authority range, and falls even lower for those with the highest authority.
Considering how social authority may impact your marketing strategy is an important angle, especially in light of findings that suggest that some tactics may actually hurt engagement depending on your brand’s authority position. Read the full study and findings at Twitter Engagement Unmasked.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Be a part of SMX East, the world's largest search marketing conference programmed by the team from our sister site Search Engine Land. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.
Kelsey Libert on February 3, 2015 at 9:00 am
2.3K
MORE
Marketing-Strategy-Studies
Success begins with a good plan. A good plan, in turn, begins with research to understand which solutions might offer the best outcomes for your challenges.
Four new studies have taken on answering the who, what, where, why, and when of digital marketing, giving us insights on the right solutions for brands in every vertical.
Social Content Calendar
A successful marketing effort relies on your ability to deliver the content that audiences want, when they want it.
Figuring out these two components can be challenging, so BuzzStream and Fractl (my employer) looked more closely at sharing among 11 different verticals over six months to find patterns with popular content.
Using BuzzSumo, we tracked 220,000 pieces of content in these formats: how-to articles, lists, what posts, why posts, and videos.
How-To Articles
This format peaks in October, but earns strong shares in August and November as well. How-to articles are the most successful format for the food vertical, earning 37% of all shares during our study period. How-to articles also perform strongly for the news vertical — earning a close second place — with 22% of shares.
Lists
Lists lead content sharing in the summertime. In June through August, this format earns between 17K and 24K shares consistently each month.
Lists are also the strongest content type for the health and travel vertical, and tie for most-shared format in the food vertical.
What Posts
This content type, which typically asks a question or describes an insight such as What Bartenders Actually Think of Your Drink Order, emerged as the riskiest format in our study, earning both the highest high and lowest low in social sharing over six months.
What-posts spiked with 29K shares in October with a surge in the news vertical; however, what-posts rarely received even 1K in shares in June or July.
Why Posts
Content that explains – called why-posts – is the second most-shared format and receives the most attention in the fall, earning an average of 24K shares per month in September, October, and November. Why-posts are particularly strong earners in the lifestyle vertical, accounting for 36% of overall shares.
Videos
Videos earned 27–35% of of shares in the education and entertainment verticals, but ranked last for many other verticals. Video trends may be ones to watch as both Facebook and Twitter compete for stakes in this format.
Evergreen content formats
Lists and why-posts emerged as the highest performing content types overall, earning more than 20% of all shares in the dataset and 22–32% of shares in the Entertainment, News, and Travel verticals.
However, as the chart above suggests, timing plays a big role in content sharing success. For more, we’ve compiled the results by vertical, content type, and month in our Social Content Calendar.
Marketing Trend Report
Marketers are working faster than ever to keep up with the content preferences of digital audiences. A myriad of tools and options have been developed for marketers and advertisers to engage online, and we set out to see which are rising (or falling) in popularity.
Using Google Trends, BuzzStream and Fractl tracked searches for 20 key marketing terms regionally and globally. Here we share results for five terms related to online marketing strategies.
Online Marketing Growth Strategies
Native Advertising: The late bloomer of the bunch, native advertising didn’t earn its first blip on the marketing industry’s radar until March of 2011 and didn’t gain traction until November of the same year. Since then the term has earned a mostly positive rise, peaking in August of 2014 when it briefly surpassed the traffic volume of pay-per-click.
Content Marketing: Pay-per-click earned nine times more search interest than content marketing in January of 2008, but by the end of 2014 the roles were reversed – content marketing now leads with three times the traffic. The switch took place in November of 2012 and the gap has widened continuously ever since.
Social Media Marketing: Searches for social media marketing began in 2007, the same year that Microsoft announced its investment in Facebook. But 2009 marked the beginning of a two-year, 80% rise in interest that has kept the tactic near the top in marketing searches. Searches have fluctuated 20–30% over the past three years, but hit an all time high in April of 2014.
Landing Page Optimization: The most turbulent of trends in the marketing strategy category, landing page optimization garnered its initial and greatest gain in interest between May and June of 2008. The past seven years have been extremely inconsistent for this tactic, with searches rising and falling as much as 55% in a single month. This lack of stability is a signal that the industry has not yet adopted landing page optimization as a staple marketing approach.
Pay-Per-Click: The preferred approach at the start of 2008, searches for the phrase “pay per click” have fallen 68% over the past seven years. The acronym PPC earns more search traffic by volume – an indication of the industry’s embrace of this approach – yet searches for this abbreviation have also fallen 84% during the same time period.
We’ve included the results for all 20 terms in our long-term global analysis and recent regional insights in our Marketing Trend Report.
The Influencer Marketing Discussion Trending On Twitter
After learning which marketing tools and tactics are being most searched, we turned to Twitter to find out what marketing influencers are saying about the industry. BuzzStream and Fractl scraped nearly 5,000 tweets that contained at least one marketing keyword or hashtag from our list:
Media Relations
Influencer Marketing
Digital PR
Outbound Marketing
Brand Recognition
Earned Media
PR
Public Relations
Publicity
Press Release
Then, we utilized Peer Index, Twitonomy, and the Alchemy API to discover the tweet types, sentiments, and key influencers in the discussion.
Marketing Conversation
We found that influencers in the marketing field appear to practice what they preach when it comes to value-added content.
At least half of all tweets in this study included helpful tips or marketing insights, including resources like Entrepreneur’s roundup of Marketing Trends Experts Want You to Avoid and Ragan’s write up on How to Avoid Journalists’ 5 Worst Pitching Peeves.
This was especially true for the emerging keywords “earned media” and “outbound marketing,” in which trends were the dominant category of tweets.
Marketing Influencers
We were surprised to discover that many of the most influential people tweeting with our marketing key terms weren’t people at all – they were brands. 52% of the top influencers we identified using Peer Index included PR teams for brands ranging from commercial companies like Nestlé and Disney, to public information groups like the Los Angeles Police Department and NPR, to industry resources like PR News and Help A Reporter Out.
Of the percentage of influencers that are individuals, at least 41% are in leadership or consulting positions. Job titles like Director, CEO, CMO, and Consultant dominated the list, followed by people in writing, blogging, and strategist roles.
Our full dataset of tweets and influencers is available to download with our findings on Influencer Marketing.
Twitter Engagement Unmasked
Finally, a fascinating new study from Stone Temple rounds out the research that caught my eye this month. In their research on Twitter engagement, 1.94 million tweets revealed that social authority can have a great deal of influence over how various messaging tactics will engage followers.
StoneTemple Twitter Engagement Images Favorites
One of the most striking examples from their finding concerns the use of images. At the lowest authority levels, photos and graphics can earn up to 12X more favorites than tweets without images. Similarly, Low Authority accounts also earn the most RTs by employing images – up to 9X as many in the very lowest category.
In terms of both favorites and RTs, engagement drops off sharply for Twitter accounts in the moderate social authority range, and falls even lower for those with the highest authority.
Considering how social authority may impact your marketing strategy is an important angle, especially in light of findings that suggest that some tactics may actually hurt engagement depending on your brand’s authority position. Read the full study and findings at Twitter Engagement Unmasked.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Be a part of SMX East, the world's largest search marketing conference programmed by the team from our sister site Search Engine Land. The robust agenda covers the latest tactics in paid search, SEO, mobile, analytics and more. Register today and save $300, or come as a team and save 10%-20%.
10 Digital Marketing Trends In 2015 That Will Boost Your Strategy
Digital marketing is an impulsive, erratic, and volatile industry. The moment you catch the tiger by the tail, there’s a new tiger whose fugacious tail requires catching.
Keeping up with a changeable industry seems like a fool’s errand. Where is the balance between chasing capricious trends, on the one hand, and ossifying into a Luddite on the other?
Thankfully, there is an in between — a balance. If you can identify current trends, settle on an actionable strategy, and take measurable movement forward, you’re bound to succeed. I’ve identified X such strategies that you should keep in mind over the next few months, if not the next few years of digital marketing.
1. Stop relying on Google.
Don’t misinterpret this point. I’m not saying that Google is not on its way out. After more than a decade of domination, however, it may be on the decline. Up-and-comers like Duck Duck Go aren’t anywhere near dethroning Google GOOGL +0.77%. What their rise indicates is that consumers want alternatives — a choice not to depend on Google if they don’t have to.
Marketers should take heed. Google is one basket, but it doesn’t deserve all your marketing eggs. Search engine optimization is important, but a searcher can accomplish her goal through more means than just Google.
I advise digital marketers to rely less on Google, and engage more direct forms of interacting with their target market.
2. Mobile. Just mobile.
I wanted to say that “mobile dominates,” but that line is so utterly cliche, that I had to state it differently.
The importance of mobile search, mobile optimization, mobile conversions, and mobile ubiquity cannot be overstated. Mobile devices and our collective addiction to them are fixtures of the modern marketing era.
This article is not the place to wax verbose on the importance of mobile. Instead, my intent is to remind you that mobile is the method of the masses, and should, therefore, be a priority of the marketers.
3. Social conversion is coming.
Enough has been said about the power of social networks. Not quite enough as been said about the importance of social conversions. For ecommerce and lead generation sites, social provides a growing opportunity to improve conversion rates and gain new conversion channels.
4. New payment methods are on the rise.
With the advent of EVM credit cards (October 2015), the public is in for a new experience when it comes to payment methods. These changes will have a ripple effect on online payment and e-commerce sites.
Privacy issues are a mainstream concern and it’s up to digital marketers to lead the way in reassuring, educating, and coaching customers through the transition.
Keeping up with a changeable industry seems like a fool’s errand. Where is the balance between chasing capricious trends, on the one hand, and ossifying into a Luddite on the other?
Thankfully, there is an in between — a balance. If you can identify current trends, settle on an actionable strategy, and take measurable movement forward, you’re bound to succeed. I’ve identified X such strategies that you should keep in mind over the next few months, if not the next few years of digital marketing.
1. Stop relying on Google.
Don’t misinterpret this point. I’m not saying that Google is not on its way out. After more than a decade of domination, however, it may be on the decline. Up-and-comers like Duck Duck Go aren’t anywhere near dethroning Google GOOGL +0.77%. What their rise indicates is that consumers want alternatives — a choice not to depend on Google if they don’t have to.
Marketers should take heed. Google is one basket, but it doesn’t deserve all your marketing eggs. Search engine optimization is important, but a searcher can accomplish her goal through more means than just Google.
I advise digital marketers to rely less on Google, and engage more direct forms of interacting with their target market.
2. Mobile. Just mobile.
I wanted to say that “mobile dominates,” but that line is so utterly cliche, that I had to state it differently.
The importance of mobile search, mobile optimization, mobile conversions, and mobile ubiquity cannot be overstated. Mobile devices and our collective addiction to them are fixtures of the modern marketing era.
This article is not the place to wax verbose on the importance of mobile. Instead, my intent is to remind you that mobile is the method of the masses, and should, therefore, be a priority of the marketers.
3. Social conversion is coming.
Enough has been said about the power of social networks. Not quite enough as been said about the importance of social conversions. For ecommerce and lead generation sites, social provides a growing opportunity to improve conversion rates and gain new conversion channels.
4. New payment methods are on the rise.
With the advent of EVM credit cards (October 2015), the public is in for a new experience when it comes to payment methods. These changes will have a ripple effect on online payment and e-commerce sites.
Privacy issues are a mainstream concern and it’s up to digital marketers to lead the way in reassuring, educating, and coaching customers through the transition.
Digital marketing strategy
Improve your Digital marketing strategy with our hub page
Use our hub pages as a reference to get up-to-speed on all the main digital marketing techniques. They will help you quickly understand how to make the most of the technique through definitions and recommendations on our member resources and blog articles covering strategy, best practices and the latest statistics.
We believe that a digital marketing strategy is essential to take advantage of the growing opportunities from digital marketing, yet many companies don't have a digital marketing strategy!
Yet our Managing Digital marketing in 2015 research (a free download) showed that half of companies don't yet have a planned digital marketing strategy:
Digital Marketing Strategy 2015
An integrated digital strategy will give you a foundation for all the key online marketing activities we recommend in the Smart Insights RACE digital marketing planning framework.
This page groups our key recommendations on creating a digital strategy. If you're new to Smart Insights we recommend another free download, our Digital marketing strategy template.
Recommended Resources
Creating plans for digital marketing
At Smart Insights we believe that marketers with the best plans win. The best plans start with a solid framework to make them easy to create and communicate. This planning primer shows our main resources for planning .
Introducing RACE: A practical framework to improve your digital marketing
ARTICLE
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
ARTICLE
RACE Planning Qualification - a comprehensive online marketing course
EXPERT
Free digital marketing plan template
BASIC
Digital marketing strategy guide - 7 Steps to Success
EXPERT
Online marketing benchmark / audit spreadsheet
EXPERT
Digital strategy template toolkit
EXPERT
Digital Marketing Healthcheck
BASIC
An introduction to SOSTAC® planning
ARTICLE
Digital marketing strategy quick guide
Digital marketing strategy success factors
An effective digital strategy will help you take the right decisions to make a company successful online. A strategy process model provides a framework that gives a logical sequence to follow to ensure inclusion of all key activities of strategy development and implementation. We recommend the SOSTAC planning approach.
A Digital Marketing Strategy should involve a review to check that all of your capabilities are in place to help your organisation manage all of the digital touchpoints. But which capabilities are important, which do you need to review?
In our Managing Digital Transformation Guide for Expert members we show these in our capability visual:
Digital Marketing Capabilities Model
A successful Digital Strategy should be built on reviewing 7 core capabilities which are strategic approach, performance improvement process, management buy-in, resourcing and structure, data and infrastructure, integrated customer communications and customer experience.
Digital marketing strategy definition
A digital marketing strategy is a channel strategy which means that it should...
Be informed by research into customer channel behaviour and marketplace activity = intermediaries, publishers and competitors
Based on objectives for future online and offline channel contribution %
Define and communicate the differentials of the channel to encourage customers to use it,
BUT, need to manage channel integration
So put another way, digital marketing strategy defines how companies should:
Hit our channel leads & sales targets
Budgets for Acquisition, Conversion, Retention & Growth, Service
Communicate benefits of using this channel – enhance brand
Prioritise audiences targeted through channel
Prioritise products available through channel
Recommended member resources for Digital marketing strategy
Toolkits on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy toolkit
Ebooks on Digital marketing strategy
Competitor benchmarking guide
Digital marketing strategy guide
In-depth digital marketing case studies
SOSTAC® Digital Marketing Planning Guide
Online training on Digital marketing strategy
Live Training - watch and download past training
RACE Digital Strategy Qualification
Smart Insights Live Online Training
How to videos on Digital marketing strategy
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
Market analysis - video tutorials
Marketing templates on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing plan example
Digital Marketing Plan Workbook
Digital marketing strategy audit
Free digital marketing plan template
Free digital marketing planning infographics
Lifetime Value Spreadsheet
Online Customer Acquisition Plan guide
Online startup business model template
Q1 2015: Online Marketing Statistics Compilation - Adoption and Usage of Digital Platforms
Use our hub pages as a reference to get up-to-speed on all the main digital marketing techniques. They will help you quickly understand how to make the most of the technique through definitions and recommendations on our member resources and blog articles covering strategy, best practices and the latest statistics.
We believe that a digital marketing strategy is essential to take advantage of the growing opportunities from digital marketing, yet many companies don't have a digital marketing strategy!
Yet our Managing Digital marketing in 2015 research (a free download) showed that half of companies don't yet have a planned digital marketing strategy:
Digital Marketing Strategy 2015
An integrated digital strategy will give you a foundation for all the key online marketing activities we recommend in the Smart Insights RACE digital marketing planning framework.
This page groups our key recommendations on creating a digital strategy. If you're new to Smart Insights we recommend another free download, our Digital marketing strategy template.
Recommended Resources
Creating plans for digital marketing
At Smart Insights we believe that marketers with the best plans win. The best plans start with a solid framework to make them easy to create and communicate. This planning primer shows our main resources for planning .
Introducing RACE: A practical framework to improve your digital marketing
ARTICLE
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
ARTICLE
RACE Planning Qualification - a comprehensive online marketing course
EXPERT
Free digital marketing plan template
BASIC
Digital marketing strategy guide - 7 Steps to Success
EXPERT
Online marketing benchmark / audit spreadsheet
EXPERT
Digital strategy template toolkit
EXPERT
Digital Marketing Healthcheck
BASIC
An introduction to SOSTAC® planning
ARTICLE
Digital marketing strategy quick guide
Digital marketing strategy success factors
An effective digital strategy will help you take the right decisions to make a company successful online. A strategy process model provides a framework that gives a logical sequence to follow to ensure inclusion of all key activities of strategy development and implementation. We recommend the SOSTAC planning approach.
A Digital Marketing Strategy should involve a review to check that all of your capabilities are in place to help your organisation manage all of the digital touchpoints. But which capabilities are important, which do you need to review?
In our Managing Digital Transformation Guide for Expert members we show these in our capability visual:
Digital Marketing Capabilities Model
A successful Digital Strategy should be built on reviewing 7 core capabilities which are strategic approach, performance improvement process, management buy-in, resourcing and structure, data and infrastructure, integrated customer communications and customer experience.
Digital marketing strategy definition
A digital marketing strategy is a channel strategy which means that it should...
Be informed by research into customer channel behaviour and marketplace activity = intermediaries, publishers and competitors
Based on objectives for future online and offline channel contribution %
Define and communicate the differentials of the channel to encourage customers to use it,
BUT, need to manage channel integration
So put another way, digital marketing strategy defines how companies should:
Hit our channel leads & sales targets
Budgets for Acquisition, Conversion, Retention & Growth, Service
Communicate benefits of using this channel – enhance brand
Prioritise audiences targeted through channel
Prioritise products available through channel
Recommended member resources for Digital marketing strategy
Toolkits on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing strategy toolkit
Ebooks on Digital marketing strategy
Competitor benchmarking guide
Digital marketing strategy guide
In-depth digital marketing case studies
SOSTAC® Digital Marketing Planning Guide
Online training on Digital marketing strategy
Live Training - watch and download past training
RACE Digital Strategy Qualification
Smart Insights Live Online Training
How to videos on Digital marketing strategy
Creating a Digital Marketing Plan Fast Start
Market analysis - video tutorials
Marketing templates on Digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing plan example
Digital Marketing Plan Workbook
Digital marketing strategy audit
Free digital marketing plan template
Free digital marketing planning infographics
Lifetime Value Spreadsheet
Online Customer Acquisition Plan guide
Online startup business model template
Q1 2015: Online Marketing Statistics Compilation - Adoption and Usage of Digital Platforms
The Case For Niche SEO Specialists
woman-think-plan-ss-1920
Search engine optimization (SEO) is comprised of dozens of separate, interlocking, smaller strategies. Google’s search ranking algorithm has evolved to a point where it incorporates millions of data points from all over the web to calculate the rank of each indexed website.
In the search engine’s infancy, SEO was a relatively simple, straightforward matter, and a handful of structural changes could easily get you on page one. Today, you’ll have to carefully navigate multiple landscapes in a consistent, organized way if you want to get the most out of your search visibility.
For most entrepreneurs and marketers, this is too much to handle alone. The usual solutions involve hiring additional team members, outsourcing portions of the work, or simply partnering with an outside agency that can handle all these individual tasks.
However, one of the most efficient strategies is to seek out individual experts in niche fields — people who have developed an expertise in one, highly specific area of SEO rather than a decent level of expertise in all of them. Some agencies operate by collecting masters of individual niches into one consolidated location; so whether you seek such an agency or hope to recruit your own team of niche specialists, these specific experts are the most efficient route to go.
Following are the main reasons why a team of niche specialists can be preferable to a generalist.
The Time Factor
First up, there’s the time factor. Trying to handle every task and every tactic in a broader SEO strategy is going to be a nightmare, especially for an entrepreneur trying to do everything alone. Working with a dedicated SEO expert will save you some time, but working with niche specialists will save you even more time.
With a generalist, you’ll spend time training and getting up to speed on new topics, while specialists tend to be better informed in their individual areas of expertise. Generalists also have to shift gears throughout the day, performing the roles of an entire team of people. Specialists are able to accomplish more in shorter stretches of time — after all, they’re more familiar with their territory.
The Skill Factor
Generalists aren’t always sloppy, but the nature of SEO work favors specialists when it comes to the accuracy and efficiency of executing tasks.
Here are the main problems with generalists:
Generalists typically haven’t spent as long cultivating their skills in any one particular area, so they’re less efficient and less precise when executing tasks.
Generalists tend to read general SEO news and can easily fall behind their specialist counterparts when it comes to new strategies.
Generalists have less experience and familiarity with finding the best possible strategy for a situation and diagnosing problems when they come up.
In most scenarios, the sheer skill level of specialists will lead to fewer mistakes and greater results.
The Money Factor
The money factor can be a hindrance to some; after all, if you hire a full team of individual specialists to do your work, you’ll spend more money than you would spend hiring one or two generalists. However, if you’re smart and careful with your budgeting, you can make a team of specialists far more affordable.
If you segment your work and only hire specialists for what you need them to do (i.e., hiring part-time or contract-based work only for areas where your generalist is weak), you can save money in the long term. Partnering with an agency that exclusively uses specialists will be far cheaper and more efficient than any other strategy (for most businesses).
The Organization Factor
There is a downside in working with specialists: If you aren’t digging into everything yourself as a generalist, you might not be as in tune with the daily events of each individual area.
The flip side to this, of course, is that you’ll be able to look at your campaign at a higher level. You’ll get the 10,000-foot view of your SEO strategy, abandoning the organization and execution of smaller-level tasks in exchange for a bigger perspective.
5 Types Of Specialists
If you’ve landed in favor of hiring specialists to handle your SEO strategy, there are several types of experts you’ll need:
Content Writer. Content writers are good at writing material that engages people. They’ll learn your target audience, develop your brand voice, and consistently produce content that gets people to visit your site and convert, which will increase your brand reputation and domain authority.
Technical SEO. The technical SEO practitioner might double as a developer or designer. They’re good at making sure your site is structurally sound, with updated code, fast loading times, mobile optimization, and proper schema.org markup.
Link Builder. Link builders specialize in off-site optimization, but be careful who you choose here. Low-quality “specialists” might focus on quantity over quality, but you want the opposite. Seek candidates who know what quality really means and how to acquire inbound links in a safe, effective way.
Social Media Expert. Social experts are masters at building a following and generating traffic. They’ll take your content, learn your brand, and get involved on a social level to bring more attention to your brand and site.
Local Reputation Specialist. Local reputation building is an emerging niche, but it’s an increasingly important one. These specialists will build your local citation profile and ensure your business’s presence on third party apps like Yelp and Google My Business is consistent with best practices.
When you start using niche experts to execute your business’s SEO strategy, you should notice an almost immediate difference. You’ll worry less about your performance on individual tasks, and you’ll see a bigger picture perspective on how everything else ties together.
Stay involved by reading SEO news and optimizing your own efforts for search engines when possible, but for the most part, choose your experts wisely and they’ll be able to handle the rest on their own.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is comprised of dozens of separate, interlocking, smaller strategies. Google’s search ranking algorithm has evolved to a point where it incorporates millions of data points from all over the web to calculate the rank of each indexed website.
In the search engine’s infancy, SEO was a relatively simple, straightforward matter, and a handful of structural changes could easily get you on page one. Today, you’ll have to carefully navigate multiple landscapes in a consistent, organized way if you want to get the most out of your search visibility.
For most entrepreneurs and marketers, this is too much to handle alone. The usual solutions involve hiring additional team members, outsourcing portions of the work, or simply partnering with an outside agency that can handle all these individual tasks.
However, one of the most efficient strategies is to seek out individual experts in niche fields — people who have developed an expertise in one, highly specific area of SEO rather than a decent level of expertise in all of them. Some agencies operate by collecting masters of individual niches into one consolidated location; so whether you seek such an agency or hope to recruit your own team of niche specialists, these specific experts are the most efficient route to go.
Following are the main reasons why a team of niche specialists can be preferable to a generalist.
The Time Factor
First up, there’s the time factor. Trying to handle every task and every tactic in a broader SEO strategy is going to be a nightmare, especially for an entrepreneur trying to do everything alone. Working with a dedicated SEO expert will save you some time, but working with niche specialists will save you even more time.
With a generalist, you’ll spend time training and getting up to speed on new topics, while specialists tend to be better informed in their individual areas of expertise. Generalists also have to shift gears throughout the day, performing the roles of an entire team of people. Specialists are able to accomplish more in shorter stretches of time — after all, they’re more familiar with their territory.
The Skill Factor
Generalists aren’t always sloppy, but the nature of SEO work favors specialists when it comes to the accuracy and efficiency of executing tasks.
Here are the main problems with generalists:
Generalists typically haven’t spent as long cultivating their skills in any one particular area, so they’re less efficient and less precise when executing tasks.
Generalists tend to read general SEO news and can easily fall behind their specialist counterparts when it comes to new strategies.
Generalists have less experience and familiarity with finding the best possible strategy for a situation and diagnosing problems when they come up.
In most scenarios, the sheer skill level of specialists will lead to fewer mistakes and greater results.
The Money Factor
The money factor can be a hindrance to some; after all, if you hire a full team of individual specialists to do your work, you’ll spend more money than you would spend hiring one or two generalists. However, if you’re smart and careful with your budgeting, you can make a team of specialists far more affordable.
If you segment your work and only hire specialists for what you need them to do (i.e., hiring part-time or contract-based work only for areas where your generalist is weak), you can save money in the long term. Partnering with an agency that exclusively uses specialists will be far cheaper and more efficient than any other strategy (for most businesses).
The Organization Factor
There is a downside in working with specialists: If you aren’t digging into everything yourself as a generalist, you might not be as in tune with the daily events of each individual area.
The flip side to this, of course, is that you’ll be able to look at your campaign at a higher level. You’ll get the 10,000-foot view of your SEO strategy, abandoning the organization and execution of smaller-level tasks in exchange for a bigger perspective.
5 Types Of Specialists
If you’ve landed in favor of hiring specialists to handle your SEO strategy, there are several types of experts you’ll need:
Content Writer. Content writers are good at writing material that engages people. They’ll learn your target audience, develop your brand voice, and consistently produce content that gets people to visit your site and convert, which will increase your brand reputation and domain authority.
Technical SEO. The technical SEO practitioner might double as a developer or designer. They’re good at making sure your site is structurally sound, with updated code, fast loading times, mobile optimization, and proper schema.org markup.
Link Builder. Link builders specialize in off-site optimization, but be careful who you choose here. Low-quality “specialists” might focus on quantity over quality, but you want the opposite. Seek candidates who know what quality really means and how to acquire inbound links in a safe, effective way.
Social Media Expert. Social experts are masters at building a following and generating traffic. They’ll take your content, learn your brand, and get involved on a social level to bring more attention to your brand and site.
Local Reputation Specialist. Local reputation building is an emerging niche, but it’s an increasingly important one. These specialists will build your local citation profile and ensure your business’s presence on third party apps like Yelp and Google My Business is consistent with best practices.
When you start using niche experts to execute your business’s SEO strategy, you should notice an almost immediate difference. You’ll worry less about your performance on individual tasks, and you’ll see a bigger picture perspective on how everything else ties together.
Stay involved by reading SEO news and optimizing your own efforts for search engines when possible, but for the most part, choose your experts wisely and they’ll be able to handle the rest on their own.
50 Reasons Your Website Deserves to Be Penalized By Google
Unfortunately, there’s a flipside: a penalty. That’s the consequence of Google taking issue with something on your site. Sometimes a penalty is well deserved, but even if you know you’re in the wrong, you probably want to do something about it.
What Is a Google Penalty?
Google has been changing its ranking algorithms since December 2000. That’s when it released its toolbar extension. At the time, the toolbar update represented a sea change that would create the SEO industry as we know it. In fact, it was the first time PageRank was published in a meaningful or usable form.
Over the next decade-and-a-bit, Google continued to refine the quality of its search results. Over time, it begins to eliminate poor quality content and elevate the good stuff to the top of the SERPs. That’s where penalties – come in.
The Penguin update was rolled out in 2012. It hit more than 1 in 10 search results overnight, wiped some sites out of search entirely, pushed poor quality content off the map and forced optimizers to think much more carefully about their content strategy. Since then, SEO professionals have been very tuned in to Google’s plans, fearing the next update in case it results in a penalty for a site they’re working on.
Recognizing a Penalty
Penalties can be automatic or manual. With manual penalties, you’ll probably be told, but you may not always know you’ve been targeted if the cause is algorithmic. Those penalties may take even the most experienced SEO professionals by surprise.
For algorithmic penalties, here are some sure-fire clues.
Your website is not ranking well for your brand name any more. That’s a dead giveaway. Even if your site doesn’t rank for much else, it should at least do well on that one keyword.
Any page one positions you had are slipping back to page two or three without any action on your part.
PageRank for your site has inexplicably dropped from a respectable two or three to a big fat zero (or a measly PR of one).
The entire website has been removed from Google’s cached search results overnight.
Running a site search – site:yourdomain.com keyword – yields no results.
Your listing – when you eventually find it in Google – is for a page on your site other than the home page.
If you see one or more of these factors, you can be pretty sure that a penalty has affected your site.
Why Has Google Penalized My Site?
Google is continually tweaking and revising the way it indexes content.
While it does publish clues about its algorithm updates, it rarely comes clean about all of its reasons for changes. Fixing things can be tough.
To get you off on the right track, here’s the part you’ve been waiting for: 50 common reasons for Google taking issue with your site. While we’re not saying we know the definite reasons for a penalty, we do know that these factors all contribute.
Buying links. Some swear it doesn’t happen, but actual evidence is mixed. Buying links could certainly be seen as an attempt to manipulate PageRank, and therein lies the controversy. If you’ve been buying bad links (and lots of them), your actions could have caught up with you.
Excessive reciprocal links. Swapping links was once an innocent marketing tactic until it started to be abused. If you’ve been exchanging lots of links with clients, it could be seen as a manipulation attempt.
Duplicate content. Hopefully this one’s obvious: any duplicate content on your site makes it less useful in Google’s view, and that could result in a penalty. Make sure your content is unique and well-written; use tools like Copyscape and CopyGator too
Overusing H1 tags. Correctly structuring content helps with SEO. The H1 tag helps Google to understand what the page is about. Excessive H1 tags could be seen as an attempt to pump Google’s listing with keywords.
Internal 404s. Google wants to know that you tend to your content and weed out any errors and problems. If you’re delivering 404s inside your own website, it’s a sure fire signal that your users aren’t getting the information they ask for.
Links from sites in another language. This one seems unfair, right? You’ve got a legitimate link from a client in another country, yet it’s technically counted against you. Well, Google’s reasoning is sound: users generally tend to prefer one language, so linking to sites in another language isn’t that useful for them.
Keyword stuffed content. There are all kinds of weird and wonderful ‘rules’ about keyword density in content. The truth is that none of these rules are proven, and a very high keyword density is a flag for poorly written content. If Google detects a weirdly high number of keywords in a page, it may penalize you – rightly or wrongly.
Footer links. Some web designers use footer links as a navigational aid; some try to manipulate PageRank by using the footer as a place to pass link juice unnaturally. There’s a short discussion about this on Moz.
Missing sitemap data. Google uses the XML sitemap to parse your site’s structure and learn how it’s put together. Make sure your XML sitemap is available and up-to-date, and then submit it in your Webmaster Tools account.
Hidden links. All of the links on your site should be visible and useful to users. Anything that’s hidden is considered suspicious. Never make a link the same color as the background of a page or button, even if you have an innocent reason.
Broken external links. If you don’t keep links up-to-date, Google will assume you don’t care about the user experience and are happy to pack visitors off to various 404 error pages. Check links periodically and pull the duff ones.
Scraped content. Sometimes website managers pull content from other sites in order to bulk our their own pages. Often, this is done with good intentions, and it may be an innocent error. But Google sees this as pointless duplication. Replace it with your own original content instead.
Hidden content. Less ethical optimization tactics include disguising text on a page to manipulate the theme or keyword weighting. It goes without saying that this is a big no-no.
Anchor text overuse. Once upon a time, SEO experts worked on linking certain keywords in order to reinforce their authority. Since the 2012 Penguin update, the over-use of anchor text linking is strongly discouraged. Switch out your forced, unnatural keyword links for honest links phrased in real English.
Neglecting hreflang. Neglecting what now? ‘Hreflang’ is designed to notify Google that you have intentionally published duplicate content for different languages or localities. The jury’s out as to whether it really helps, but using it can’t hurt in the meantime.
Website timing out or down. When a website goes down, everyone gets upset: the visitor, the webmaster and the search engine. If Google can’t find your site, it would rather de-index it rather than keep sending visitors to a dead end.
Keyword domains. While domain names aren’t that risky in themselves, domain names with keywords in might be. Consider the anchor text linking issue: if we repeatedly link to that domain, Google might see that as anchor text manipulation. If you do use an exact match domain, make sure it has plenty of great content on it, otherwise Google will assume you’re trying to fool people into clicking.
Rented links. Some experts still believe rented links are valid and useful for SEO. They pay for them on a monthly basis and change them around occasionally. However, we’d consider them paid links, and so would most of these experts on Quora.
Using blog networks. As far as Google is concerned, any kind of network is a sign of potential SERP manipulation. Most blog networks have now shut down or given users the chance to delete all of these incoming links. You should too.
Affiliate links all over the place. Google isn’t necessarily opposed to affiliate websites, but a high number of affiliate links is a red flag that the content may not be up to scratch. Although it’s possible to mask affiliate links with redirects, Google is wise to this tactic, so don’t rely on it.
Site-wide links. We all need to link pages together, but Google is constantly scanning those links for unnatural patterns. A classic example is a web developer credit in the footer of a page. Don’t just nofollow: remove them entirely.
Overusing meta keywords. Meta keywords have been a topic for debate for some time. They are way too easy to manipulate. Make sure you use no more than five per page.
Slow speeds. If your site’s slow to load, your users will get frustrated. Many, many factors affect hosting speeds, so this is quite a tricky problem to assess and troubleshoot. Use a caching plugin or a CDN right away. You could also move your site to a data center closer to your most frequent visitors: that’s a little more involved.
Spun content. Spinning is content theft. It could land you in hot water if the Google penalty doesn’t catch up with you first. Bought some super-cheap articles? Sometimes content is spun by the ‘writer’, so you may not even know about it. If the price was too good to be true, that’s a sign you may have bought spun articles.
Comment spam. Most commenting systems have an automated spam detection system, but some comments still make it through. Keep a close eye on the comments you’re getting. Also, don’t let spam build up; if you don’t have time to moderate it, switch commenting off entirely.
Black hat SEO advice. If you publish information about manipulating SERPs using black hat methods, expect to be penalized. Matt Cutts hinted at this in a video blog.
Hacked content. If your site has been hacked, Google will quickly remove it from SERPs. Act quickly to contain hacking attempts and restore sites from backup if the worst does happen.
Speedy link building. It’s natural to want your new site to rank quickly. Don’t overdo it. Lots of similar links pointing to the same place is a sign of automation. Don’t artificially bump your link velocity: make gradual changes over time.
Spam reports. Google has published an online form for spam site reporting. Your site might have been submitted as a potential source of spam, genuinely or maliciously.
Forum linking. We’ve all used forums awash with signature links. Sometimes there are so many, it can be hard to locate the actual posts. If you add a forum link, use good, natural linking techniques and consider making it a nofollow too.
Hiding your sponsors. Having a sponsor is no bad thing. Plenty of sites wouldn’t exist without them. Don’t try to hide your sponsors, but follow the rules: nofollow sponsor links and make sure Google’s news bot doesn’t crawl pages where those links can be found.
Robots.txt flaws. The robots.txt file should be used to tell search engines how to deal with your site. While there are legitimate reasons for excluding pages from robots.txt, do it sparingly: excessive blocking could be the cause of your penalty.
Links to suspicious sites. Never associate yourself with a website that is doing something ethically or legally dubious. Hacking, porn and malware-ridden sites should be avoided. Also, try to remove links to other sites that have been penalized in the past, assuming you know about it.
Landing pages. Businesses sometimes try to use multiple landing pages in order to improve their position in SERPs. Some companies also try to improve their position by creating lots of one-page websites optimized for a single keyword, then funneling users through to another site. Google considers this kind of thing to be bad practice.
Over-optimization. Google doesn’t like to see too much of a good thing. An over-optimization penalty usually means you’ve gone a step too far in your bid to obsessively out-SEO everyone else in your industry. Cool it and publish some natural content before your rank suffers.
Advertorials. The controversy around advertorial content was perhaps the most well-known of the pre-Penguin 2 debates. An advertorial is basically a page of content riddled with paid links, and often these pages were being used for aggressive manipulation of search results. The most famous example was Interflora: read about its penalty here.
Too many outbound links. When linking to other websites, keep it natural. A high quantity of links is a sign that you’re swapping links with people for the sake of mutual SEO benefit.
Redirection. If you’ve received a penalty on your site, using a 301 redirect could transfer the penalty to a new location. What’s more, the penalty could linger if you remove the redirect later. To be safe, don’t do it.
Error codes. Aside from the obvious 404 error, there are a range of others that Google really hates to see. 302 (temporarily moved) isn’t ideal; if you really must redirect something, use 301. Also, if you see any 500 errors, deal with the root cause as soon as you can. Find invisible errors with this WebConfs HTTP Header Check tool.
Duplicate metadata. Some blogging tools and CMS platforms make it all too easy to create duplicate metadata by accident. While metadata isn’t a cause for a penalty on its own, it can be a sign of a duplicate content issue on your site. In any case, it’s undesirable; try to deal with it.
Malicious backlinks. Your site NEVER deserves this penalty – but it is something you should know about. If you’re really unlucky, an unethical competitor may try to shove your site down the SERPs by getting it penalized. The most common cause is a malicious backlink campaign.
Targeted keywords. Google is waging war against some of the keywords most frequently appearing in spam sites. ‘Payday loans’ is a good example of a keyword that has already been targeted, although some people feel that it could do more. If you legitimately operate in an industry that’s rife with spam, expect to be caught in the crossfire.
Smuggled links. Don’t be sneaky and put links into script files. Google is much better at analyzing scripts and picking out weird links that shouldn’t be there.
Poor mobile websites. Google can normally detect a valid link between your mobile site and your website. If it’s poorly designed, it may not. Make sure the mobile site is sent to a device where the user agent is set to mobile. Matt Cutts also suggests using a separate subdomain.
Few outbound links. Google wants to see content that references other content of a similar standard. If you don’t share the love, it might look like an attempt to attract traffic unnaturally.
Domain has a bad rep. You may have innocently purchased a domain with a bad history, and that could cause you problems when you try to build a new site around it. Unfortunately this is often a dead end street; you may be best cutting your losses and buying another domain rather than throwing more money at the problem.
Content theft. Even if you don’t steal content, someone else could steal yours. This is troublesome, since getting the content removed could involve filing multiple DMCA takedown notices or pursuing sites in court. If you’re penalized for this, try asking Google to remove the stolen content.
Prominent ads. Advertising is OK when treated as a secondary concern. Ads should never dominate the page content or play second fiddle to an article or blog.
Using a content farm. Over the two years since Panda was phased in, it has been considered poor form to buy content from a ‘farm’ (defined as “sites with shallow or low-quality content”). If your content is poorly researched, light on detail or exists mainly to fill up the page, employ a professional rewrite it.
Beware of quick fixes. Don’t employ anyone that claims to have a magical, foolproof technique that will help to get your site to the top of the SERPs. The only way to rank well is to put in the groundwork over time.
Friday, 10 April 2015
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
The Power of Persuasion: ABCs of Leveraging Personas for Search Success
Simmons started off by asking a question: What’s better – more website traffic or better website traffic? Why wouldn’t we want both?
First, we need to define better. Better, Simmons says, is more targeted. And personas are a tool that can help in the strategy development, tactical execution, and measurement of outcomes.
personas-simmons
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Bottom line: personas help us with our targets. So how do we get there? There are three main concepts within personas, Simmons says:
Activation
Behavior
Connection
Let’s look at those closer now.
Personas, Step 1: Activation
First ask, why are people actively searching for your products and services, and where do they search? What is the stimulus that makes them active?
To start research, you can go with the obvious, Simmons says, like published study data and so on – but sometimes you need more.
He illustrated this idea by sharing a study that shows why people move from their homes.
move-data-simmons
This data is good, but only tells part of the story, he says. So we look at the triggers - what are the triggers that cause the behavior? For example, perhaps someone has a terrible commute and wants to move closer to work.
So in this stage, guess, research, hypothesize. Working from the data above, the trigger for the eviction would be, "I have been evicted" – but why?
So then there’s the stimuli. And marketers can actually influence this, says Simmons. These are around a person’s needs and desires. Fast-forwarding to strategy, if you were marketing homes, how would you tap into the desire for someone to have a closer commute?
For this portion of the research to understand needs and desires, you need to ask your market. But ask open-ended questions to get this data, says Simmons. For example, what are you looking for in a new neighborhood?
Looking at trigger research, Simmons says you can do it on your own, or pay a pretty penny and hire someone to do it for you. Here are a few resources to consider if you’re doing the self-serve model:
research-resources-simmons
For stimulus research, there are several ways to go about this. Simmons listed a few of them:
In person
Email surveys
Online surveys
By phone
Website surveys
Most marketers leverage site data to start looking at their audience, but those are the people you already know and can target. You want to move beyond that, says Simmons. You want to expand that audience.
Here are a few ways you can expand your audience set:
find-audiences-simmons
However, you should still leverage the site data. Check out your Google Analytics "demographics" reports to learn more.
Now it’s time to build your personas…
Simmons shared a template he likes to use. In it, he puts not just text, but also tweets from real users and images that depict ideas.
user-template-simmons
To fill in the template, ask some of the following questions …
Facts:
What do they do? Business, hobbies, education, demographics, income.
What do they search for? This is basic keyword research.
Check out the Google "display planner" tool to help you. It’s free.
Goals:
What are they trying to do?
Why can’t they do it?
How can you help them?
Personas Step 2: Behavior
Here, Simmons says to look at how the user is interacting online. And remember, sometimes they are passive searchers – not active. Maybe they aren’t using Google – maybe they are on CNN.com browsing, but they are still your target market.
By the way, the Google display planner tool can give insight into certain sites you may want to target.
Think about the differences between triggers and stimuli when thinking about why they need to be in the funnel, says Simmons. A triggered need might be because "my boss told me to" but a stimuli could be something different.
Usually, says Simmons, triggers are emotional: "I don’t want to miss out"; "I want to impress" – there are emotional motivations to do what we do. Simmons says to check out Robert Plutchik’s "Wheel of Emotion" to build into the personas:
wheel-emotions
And keep in mind that while the old "funnel" we’re all used to does still apply in some industries, Simmons showed that it has morphed quite a bit. It’s not so "cut and dry" anymore:
old-funnel-simmons
new-funnel-example-simmons
Personas, Step 3: Connect
Simmons pointed out that it really is all about content to connect. If we don’t have content to connect, we can’t leverage the triggers. So, next step is to connect content with context.
How do we do that? Simmons says to start doing real interviews to better understand who the people are. What are their questions, and how can your content answer them?
context-simmons
Simmons shared some examples of these ideas in action. Loosely, the steps involved were conducting research, segmenting the audience, mapping segments to personas, understanding the personas’ funnel journey, and answering with content that speaks to their needs.
Here’s a sample funnel for a sample persona, so you can get an idea of how complex it can be:
new-funnel-simmons
Finally, you can test personas by doing post-interaction surveys and such to validate.
So, how are you creating your personas? Weigh in in the comments below.
This article was originally published on ClickZ.
Tags ClickZ Live Personas Social media Google
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About the author
Jessica Lee
Jessica Lee
Founder, bizbuzzcontent
Jessica Lee is the founder of bizbuzzcontent, a boutique content services company that offers quality content creation services and content strategy consulting.
Since 2005, Jessica has been in the business of content and communications, with the past seven years focused on the Web marketing space.
Prior to launching bizbuzzcontent...
Read more on Jessica
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First, we need to define better. Better, Simmons says, is more targeted. And personas are a tool that can help in the strategy development, tactical execution, and measurement of outcomes.
personas-simmons
Related articles
Using Personas to Drive Quality Traffic: An Interview With Grant Simmons, Homes.com
Top 10 Skills That Separate Real UX Designers from Wannabes
40+ Tools & Tips to Execute a Winning Content Strategy
Remarketing & Behavioral Ads @ClickZLive #czlny
10 New Media Trends Shaping the Lives of Modern Consumers @ClickZLive #CZLNY
Bottom line: personas help us with our targets. So how do we get there? There are three main concepts within personas, Simmons says:
Activation
Behavior
Connection
Let’s look at those closer now.
Personas, Step 1: Activation
First ask, why are people actively searching for your products and services, and where do they search? What is the stimulus that makes them active?
To start research, you can go with the obvious, Simmons says, like published study data and so on – but sometimes you need more.
He illustrated this idea by sharing a study that shows why people move from their homes.
move-data-simmons
This data is good, but only tells part of the story, he says. So we look at the triggers - what are the triggers that cause the behavior? For example, perhaps someone has a terrible commute and wants to move closer to work.
So in this stage, guess, research, hypothesize. Working from the data above, the trigger for the eviction would be, "I have been evicted" – but why?
So then there’s the stimuli. And marketers can actually influence this, says Simmons. These are around a person’s needs and desires. Fast-forwarding to strategy, if you were marketing homes, how would you tap into the desire for someone to have a closer commute?
For this portion of the research to understand needs and desires, you need to ask your market. But ask open-ended questions to get this data, says Simmons. For example, what are you looking for in a new neighborhood?
Looking at trigger research, Simmons says you can do it on your own, or pay a pretty penny and hire someone to do it for you. Here are a few resources to consider if you’re doing the self-serve model:
research-resources-simmons
For stimulus research, there are several ways to go about this. Simmons listed a few of them:
In person
Email surveys
Online surveys
By phone
Website surveys
Most marketers leverage site data to start looking at their audience, but those are the people you already know and can target. You want to move beyond that, says Simmons. You want to expand that audience.
Here are a few ways you can expand your audience set:
find-audiences-simmons
However, you should still leverage the site data. Check out your Google Analytics "demographics" reports to learn more.
Now it’s time to build your personas…
Simmons shared a template he likes to use. In it, he puts not just text, but also tweets from real users and images that depict ideas.
user-template-simmons
To fill in the template, ask some of the following questions …
Facts:
What do they do? Business, hobbies, education, demographics, income.
What do they search for? This is basic keyword research.
Check out the Google "display planner" tool to help you. It’s free.
Goals:
What are they trying to do?
Why can’t they do it?
How can you help them?
Personas Step 2: Behavior
Here, Simmons says to look at how the user is interacting online. And remember, sometimes they are passive searchers – not active. Maybe they aren’t using Google – maybe they are on CNN.com browsing, but they are still your target market.
By the way, the Google display planner tool can give insight into certain sites you may want to target.
Think about the differences between triggers and stimuli when thinking about why they need to be in the funnel, says Simmons. A triggered need might be because "my boss told me to" but a stimuli could be something different.
Usually, says Simmons, triggers are emotional: "I don’t want to miss out"; "I want to impress" – there are emotional motivations to do what we do. Simmons says to check out Robert Plutchik’s "Wheel of Emotion" to build into the personas:
wheel-emotions
And keep in mind that while the old "funnel" we’re all used to does still apply in some industries, Simmons showed that it has morphed quite a bit. It’s not so "cut and dry" anymore:
old-funnel-simmons
new-funnel-example-simmons
Personas, Step 3: Connect
Simmons pointed out that it really is all about content to connect. If we don’t have content to connect, we can’t leverage the triggers. So, next step is to connect content with context.
How do we do that? Simmons says to start doing real interviews to better understand who the people are. What are their questions, and how can your content answer them?
context-simmons
Simmons shared some examples of these ideas in action. Loosely, the steps involved were conducting research, segmenting the audience, mapping segments to personas, understanding the personas’ funnel journey, and answering with content that speaks to their needs.
Here’s a sample funnel for a sample persona, so you can get an idea of how complex it can be:
new-funnel-simmons
Finally, you can test personas by doing post-interaction surveys and such to validate.
So, how are you creating your personas? Weigh in in the comments below.
This article was originally published on ClickZ.
Tags ClickZ Live Personas Social media Google
Categories Events Analytics
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About the author
Jessica Lee
Jessica Lee
Founder, bizbuzzcontent
Jessica Lee is the founder of bizbuzzcontent, a boutique content services company that offers quality content creation services and content strategy consulting.
Since 2005, Jessica has been in the business of content and communications, with the past seven years focused on the Web marketing space.
Prior to launching bizbuzzcontent...
Read more on Jessica
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The Ideal Length for Blog Posts, Tweets, and Everything Else in Your Marketing
to cover.
I bet if you starting teaching me how to take great pictures, and we recorded and transcribed the conversation, it would be many thousands of words eventually.
If the things you write tend to be short, don’t fluff them up. Try choosing bigger topics. Hope this helps, Abbie!
Reply to Andy Crestodina (@crestodina)
John Zakaria 10/20/14 @ 6:03AM
Hi Andy,
I really appreciate your article as you discussed very important guidlines for content marketing recommended length for every kind of content and this is what i follow when i come to write articles i keep them as longer as i can to rank them faster and for emails “it is the first time to know the recommended length in your article”
Reply to John Zakaria
Waqas Butt 10/30/14 @ 5:35PM
ok its mean we are now write for seo not for users. Research is totally based on major giants which are always on top in google. They always on top because of their strength.
Reply to Waqas Butt
Paige Worthy 2/03/15 @ 10:35AM
Hi Andy! Our team spent the majority of our weekly call talking about blog post length today… Your quote at the end here really sums it up for me: “Every piece of content should be as long as it takes to convey the message, and no longer.”
Arbitrary word lengths serve no one! Thanks for another great post.
Reply to Paige Worthy
Andy Crestodina (@crestodina) 2/03/15 @ 10:57AM
Yes, that last sentence is the most important point. It originally said “Every piece of content should be as long as it takes to convey the message, and NOT A WORD longer” …but then I shortened it. :)
Reply to Andy Crestodina (@crestodina)
Zeeshan Parvez 2/11/15 @ 4:03AM
Genius!
Reply to Zeeshan Parvez
Ahmad Fahrurroji 2/13/15 @ 11:20PM
It is an amazing post, your explanation is very detailed and I love it. However, my problem is I can only write articles for maximum up to 1,000 words. Hopefully I can reach targets more than that.
Thank you Andy for sharing.
Reply to Ahmad Fahrurroji
Categories
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Inside Orbit
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Social Media
Uncategorized
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I bet if you starting teaching me how to take great pictures, and we recorded and transcribed the conversation, it would be many thousands of words eventually.
If the things you write tend to be short, don’t fluff them up. Try choosing bigger topics. Hope this helps, Abbie!
Reply to Andy Crestodina (@crestodina)
John Zakaria 10/20/14 @ 6:03AM
Hi Andy,
I really appreciate your article as you discussed very important guidlines for content marketing recommended length for every kind of content and this is what i follow when i come to write articles i keep them as longer as i can to rank them faster and for emails “it is the first time to know the recommended length in your article”
Reply to John Zakaria
Waqas Butt 10/30/14 @ 5:35PM
ok its mean we are now write for seo not for users. Research is totally based on major giants which are always on top in google. They always on top because of their strength.
Reply to Waqas Butt
Paige Worthy 2/03/15 @ 10:35AM
Hi Andy! Our team spent the majority of our weekly call talking about blog post length today… Your quote at the end here really sums it up for me: “Every piece of content should be as long as it takes to convey the message, and no longer.”
Arbitrary word lengths serve no one! Thanks for another great post.
Reply to Paige Worthy
Andy Crestodina (@crestodina) 2/03/15 @ 10:57AM
Yes, that last sentence is the most important point. It originally said “Every piece of content should be as long as it takes to convey the message, and NOT A WORD longer” …but then I shortened it. :)
Reply to Andy Crestodina (@crestodina)
Zeeshan Parvez 2/11/15 @ 4:03AM
Genius!
Reply to Zeeshan Parvez
Ahmad Fahrurroji 2/13/15 @ 11:20PM
It is an amazing post, your explanation is very detailed and I love it. However, my problem is I can only write articles for maximum up to 1,000 words. Hopefully I can reach targets more than that.
Thank you Andy for sharing.
Reply to Ahmad Fahrurroji
Categories
Analytics
Digital Strategy
Inside Orbit
SEO & Content Marketing
Social Media
Uncategorized
Web Development
Website Design & Usability
Search Blog
3 Essential Local SEO Strategies To Use Post-Pigeon Update
Global SEO updates like Panda and Penguin changed fundamental ranking processes across the board, but one of Google’s latest changes, deemed the “Pigeon” update, has made an impact on a much more local
level. The Pigeon update, designed to give users a better search
experience when looking for local businesses, has put a stop to some old
local SEO tactics while paving the way for a handful of new ones.
Google now favors the information found on local directory sites, such as Yelp, with more weight, and uses more offsite information to generate immediate local search results. If you’re running a local business and you want to stay ahead of your competitors, start implementing these three new local SEO strategies:
1. Ensure Data Accuracy and Consistency Across the Web.
Now, more than ever, Google is cracking down on local businesses whose information is inconsistent or difficult to verify, and rewarding local businesses with clear, concise, and easily-available information. Your first and most important tactic should be to peruse the Web for mentions of your business and claim new profiles on local directories. Mentions of your NAP (business Name, Address, and Phone Number) are becoming major local ranking signals, so the more instances of that information there are across the web, and the more consistent that information is, the better.
Your first step is to claim your local profile pages on every local directory you can find (or at least the ones that are relevant for your business). Google+ and Yelp are must-haves for almost any business, while other sites like TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon are dependent on your specific niche. Most of these sites allow you to claim your local profile for free and take charge of updating it with accurate information and images. Yext provides a tool to easily check many of the major directories, and also shows you how your NAP information appears on each one, highlighting any inconsistencies.
Quantity is significant; the more instances of your data appearing on the Web, the better. But the more important factor here is consistency. Google notices when your NAP information is in the same format, and it will reward you if that format is exactly repeated across each platform. However, any discrepancy—even changing the word “road” to the abbreviation “rd”—could register as an inconsistency, and weaken the impact of your efforts.
Once you’ve completed an initial round of claiming and cleanup, you can start your regular ongoing efforts. Once a month or so, do a routine check of your local profiles and see what other opportunities there are for you to update your information or claim new profiles on up-and-coming platforms. It’s also a good idea to include your NAP (consistent, as always) on other forms of external posts, such as press releases and guest blogs.
2. Drive Your Customers to Google+ and Yelp (and Similar Local Directories).
The Pigeon update did more than just boost rankings for sites with consistent information across the web. Possibly in response to an accusation that Yelp pages and reviews were not treated favorably in Google’s algorithm, Google updated their ranking structure to improve Yelp page ranking positions. For some small businesses, Yelp review pages actually started ranking higher than the company’s website.
This new ranking system has been seen as interference by some business owners, diverting traffic away from their companies’ webpages. However, it also represents a key opportunity. If more people are visiting Yelp to help make purchasing decisions, and Google wants more people to go to Yelp, all you have to do is spend more time getting people to go to your specific Yelp page.
Google now favors the information found on local directory sites, such as Yelp, with more weight, and uses more offsite information to generate immediate local search results. If you’re running a local business and you want to stay ahead of your competitors, start implementing these three new local SEO strategies:
1. Ensure Data Accuracy and Consistency Across the Web.
Now, more than ever, Google is cracking down on local businesses whose information is inconsistent or difficult to verify, and rewarding local businesses with clear, concise, and easily-available information. Your first and most important tactic should be to peruse the Web for mentions of your business and claim new profiles on local directories. Mentions of your NAP (business Name, Address, and Phone Number) are becoming major local ranking signals, so the more instances of that information there are across the web, and the more consistent that information is, the better.
Your first step is to claim your local profile pages on every local directory you can find (or at least the ones that are relevant for your business). Google+ and Yelp are must-haves for almost any business, while other sites like TripAdvisor and UrbanSpoon are dependent on your specific niche. Most of these sites allow you to claim your local profile for free and take charge of updating it with accurate information and images. Yext provides a tool to easily check many of the major directories, and also shows you how your NAP information appears on each one, highlighting any inconsistencies.
Quantity is significant; the more instances of your data appearing on the Web, the better. But the more important factor here is consistency. Google notices when your NAP information is in the same format, and it will reward you if that format is exactly repeated across each platform. However, any discrepancy—even changing the word “road” to the abbreviation “rd”—could register as an inconsistency, and weaken the impact of your efforts.
Once you’ve completed an initial round of claiming and cleanup, you can start your regular ongoing efforts. Once a month or so, do a routine check of your local profiles and see what other opportunities there are for you to update your information or claim new profiles on up-and-coming platforms. It’s also a good idea to include your NAP (consistent, as always) on other forms of external posts, such as press releases and guest blogs.
2. Drive Your Customers to Google+ and Yelp (and Similar Local Directories).
The Pigeon update did more than just boost rankings for sites with consistent information across the web. Possibly in response to an accusation that Yelp pages and reviews were not treated favorably in Google’s algorithm, Google updated their ranking structure to improve Yelp page ranking positions. For some small businesses, Yelp review pages actually started ranking higher than the company’s website.
This new ranking system has been seen as interference by some business owners, diverting traffic away from their companies’ webpages. However, it also represents a key opportunity. If more people are visiting Yelp to help make purchasing decisions, and Google wants more people to go to Yelp, all you have to do is spend more time getting people to go to your specific Yelp page.
5 crazy SEO mistakes not to make in WordPress
There’s a nasty rumor going around that WordPress is beautifully set up
for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) “out of the box.” We're all fans of
WordPress - but the core software does need a little nudge in the right
direction when it comes to SEO.
In reality, if your idea of optimizing your WordPress stops at
hitting Publish on your latest post, you’re missing out on a lot of
potential. But even those of you who feel that you are doing quite a lot
in terms of onsite optimization are probably making at least one of the
following mistakes (I know I certainly have done in the past).
So take a few moments to digest the following common SEO mistakes made by WordPress users - I’ll be offering straightforward solutions to each one!
1) Not Providing an XML Sitemap
Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover.I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to learning new SEO strategies - if I hear it on the grapevine I take it with a hefty pinch of salt, but if I hear it from Google I take it as gospel. That’s why my position regarding sitemaps is simple: if Google says it helps them to find pages on your site that they may not otherwise discover, I’m going to give them one.
But that’s not all there is to sitemaps. They can also be used to supply additional information about your website (such as how often you expect pages to be updated) and meta data relating to specific media types (such as the running time of a video). And if you are running a new site or one with only a handful backlinks pointing towards it, a sitemap can make a big difference in enabling Google to discover and index all of the relevant pages on your website.
In simple terms, a sitemap is simply a specifically formatted list of the pages on your site that you would like to be indexed by the search engines. You could create one manually if you like carrying out jobs that can be automated with ease. Otherwise I have a couple of suggestions:
Google XML Sitemaps: with over ten million downloads and an average rating of 4.7 out of 5, you can rest assured that this free plugin gets the job done.
WordPress SEO by Yoast: this free plugin has a number of SEO-related functions, one of which is an excellent XML sitemap generator.
The process of building an updating a sitemap is almost entirely automated. You set a few options as you see fit then let the plugin do the rest. Google says that “[most] webmasters will benefit from sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.” With that in mind, why wouldn’t you create a sitemap for your WordPress website?
2) Poor Categorization and Tagging
Few things bug me more than sites that do not utilize categories and tags (sometimes referred to collectively as taxonomies) properly. The simple fact is that categories and tags offer opportunities for increased engagement and traffic, but the bigger issue at hand is that poor use of categories and tags can actually persuade a visitor to leave your site.This is what you need to know about WordPress taxonomies: if categories are your table of contents, tags are your index When people try to tell me that tags are useless, I ask them of how many non-fiction books they have read that don’t have an index (I just checked five on my bookshelf and discovered that only one of them doesn’t).
Conscientious categorization and tagging of your posts will not only make it easier for visitors to find what they want (assuming of course you create an Archives page that makes accessing categories and tags simple) but it will also boost your onsite SEO. While Google may not rank category and tag pages high in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) (although it certainly does happen), it will be able to get a much better grasp on the keywords that are most relevant to your site by examining them.
Let me give you an example. Say for instance you run a site about zoo animals which has a particular focus on llamas. If you have a tag page for llamas that links to various pages and has various pages linking back to it, that is a strong indicator to Google that llamas are kind of a big deal on your site.
If you want to know more about how to categorize and tag effectively, click here
3) Not Defining Canonical URLs
If you have never heard about canonicalization before then brace yourself - it can be a slightly confusing concept. In order to define it effectively I will turn to Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Search:Canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:Put simply, if you don’t tell Google and friends which version of a page to index and rank, they’re going to try to figure it out themselves. The last thing you want is search engines having to pick from multiple instances what is essentially the exact same page. The solution is to provide them with a canonical URL.But technically all of these URLs are different. A web server could return completely different content for all them. When Google “canonicalizes” a URL, we try to pick the one that seems like the best representative from that set.
- www.example.com
- example.com/
- www.example.com/index.html
- example.com/home.asp
This is essentially a three step process:
- Tell WordPress how to present your site (i.e. http://www.yoursite.com/ or http://yoursite.com/).
- Tell Google (using Webmaster Tools) which URL type you want them to use.
- Use a plugin (such as the aforementioned WordPress SEO by Yoast) to ensure that canonical URLs are defined on each page of your site.
4) Not Optimizing Your Site for Google+ Authorship
Update: As of August 2014 Google no longer shows Google authorship results in its SERPs. So, while for now, using the rel=author markup will not improve your visibility in search results Google's John Muller states that they will continue to experiment with implementing structured markup. He goes on to state that:"It’s also worth mentioning that Search users will still see Google+ posts from friends and pages when they’re relevant to the query — both in the main results, and on the right-hand side. Today’s authorship change doesn’t impact these social features."Like it or not, Google+ is here to stay. You may be surprised to know that it is the second biggest social network behind Facebook, beating the likes of YouTube and Twitter.
But I’m not here to talk about social media strategization. Instead I want to focus on the concept of Google+ authorship and how it can be utilized to strengthen your position in the SERPs and boost click through rates.
If you’ve not heard of Google+ authorship before, you’ve almost certainly seen it. Every search result in Google that incorporates a profile photo of the author is an example. Astonishingly, that little photo has been proven to boost clickthrough rates in the SERPs by 150%. Further, an experiment by Cyrus Shepard from Moz resulted in an additional 56% increase in clickthroughs. In short, by incorporating Google+ authorship on your site, you can attract more search engine traffic with the same rankings.
Getting Google to verify your authorship is not an entirely straightforward process but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes and will subsequently offer you ongoing benefits. In short, it’s well worth doing. My favorite tutorial is by WPBeginner.
5) Not Optimizing How Your Posts Look in the SERPs
This mistake is similar to the previous one regarding Google+ authorship, as it relates to your clickthrough rate in the SERPs.It is borne out of an ignorance of the importance of what searchers see on Google as opposed to simply where they see it. Although the placement of a website on the SERPs (ie, 1 - 10) is a key factor, people can often be drawn to lower rankings if the titles and/or descriptions are compelling. That is why you should optimize each of your posts to give yourself the best possible chance of attracting a good clickthrough rate.
There are two things that you should concern yourself with:
-
The Meta Title: this is what will display on the SERPs in place of any headline you choose for the post onsite.
-
The Meta Description: Google may choose to use this in place of an
excerpt from your post (which can often be nothing more than a confusing
mass of words).
What Mistakes Have You Made?
Let’s face it - we’re not perfect. If you haven’t made a few SEO blunders in your time then you’re simply not trying hard enough. In reality, this post could be called, “Top 5 SEO Mistakes I Have Made With WordPress.”Join Wordtracker on social media
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A subscription to Wordtracker's premium Keywords tool will help you to:- Generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and PPC search campaigns.
- Optimize your website content by using the most popular keywords for your product and services.
- Research online markets, find niche opportunities and exploit them before your competitors.
Post Panda/Penguin SEO Strategy for Bloggers
Last year (2011) when Google Panda rolled out, many Bloggers expected it like just another Google algorithm change but honestly it changed the Blogging industry big time. Every professional Blogger has to re-work on their strategies. I have already shared a guide on how to recover from Google panda and for people who are badly struck with new Google Panda algorithm, I also offer personal Panda recovery consultancy.One thing, which people have talked about after Panda updates is, SEO is not relevant and now it’s dead and believe it, SEO is not dead and it never will. SEO is basically a quality guidelines and set of rules a Website and a Webpage should follow to meet Google SEO guidelines.
What is SEO In Post Panda World:
Before 2011, SEO and domain value used to be an important factor but it never used to be ranking factor for complete domain. After panda updates, many things changed and one of them is domain level penalty. Earlier, few shallow and low quality pages only impact particular posts and not complete domain but now in post panda SEO world(Post Penguin now), this has changed. Few low quality posts on your pages may impact the complete domain ranking and you will notice no traffic on your recent posts and traffic drop back to back. Instead of thinking Google to fix your site SEO, you should be thinking what is one thing that you did wrong, which impacted your site. I’m sharing panda SEO guide for people who are starting a new website or blog now and want to make sure Panda updates will never impact their blog.Post Panda SEO Strategies:
I’m not including basic SEO steps which you should do, as I expect you to take care of all basic SEO optimization tips. I tried to link to as much as relevant post to get things done but if you still have any questions, feel free to ask via comments.
Content Quality:
Let me start with the basic of SEO and that is your quality content.
If you are writing a post which is not very useful, doesn’t cover
complete information and doesn’t contain proper Keyword, related
Keywords and so on, chances are your content might not be seen as
quality one. One easy way to do is, simply search for your target
Keyword and see if your post contain more values than existing post on
the web. If not, it’s time to cover all missing points and make your
content useful.I know many of your might hate SEO and feel like it’s useless, but post panda world you need to develop a proper content generation strategy. Keyword research should be an essential part of it. You can use Mind map tools initially and SEMRUSh to create a list of such Keywords which are related to your domain, and then work on it. Do keep in mind, it’s not only about good content but it should be great content.
Needless to say, Onpage SEO optimization is going to play major roles and make sure your content contains LSI word. If you are using WordPress you should start using Keyword optimization plugin like EasyWPSEO, which not only show LSI Words, but also show the readability of content.
Also take care of other factors like Typos, Grammar and level of reading (Readability), which also started affecting ranking of pages and domain. Another tip which I can give you is start with Video blogging and try to add videos or slides into your post, which will make it more meaningful and useful.
Becoming more Social:
Google plus your world is
the best hint which you should get from Google directly, about getting
more social. Now there are tons of Websites and it’s always a good idea
to get mention on as much as social media sites. But from my experience,
I have seen getting more social on sites like Google plus, Twitter, Digg, Delicious and
Facebook will help you more. Out of all this, Google plus is something
which will impact your search engine placement a lot. Specially, if you
are getting hundreds of Google pluses, you can imagine what will be the
reachability of your post in a social group.
Site SEO Structure:
Earlier we know more pages we have in Google, better it is for us. But considering SEO post panda,
it’s important that only important pages of your blog is indexed. Else
your pages might land into supplement results. Instead of using
Robots.txt, I would suggest use noindex tag. Try to keep only those
pages indexed, which actually helps readers and search engine both.Add proper meta title, description and also take care of site navigation and structure. Put all important links in your navigation bars, which will also help you in Google site links to important pages of your site. Apart from that follow all traditional SEO tips like Submitting Sitemap, add robots.txt and so on.
Outbound links:
We have already discussed about importance of outbound links
and I have been constantly talking about the same. I have already given
one example of bad outbound links in my earlier post on Blog comments.
When you are linking to relevant and useful pages from your blog post,
it increases the quality of your page and it’s seen as more valued page
from SEO perspective. Also, from reader perspective adding outbound
links to useful pages helps a lot. If you are not so experience with
this, try using Zemanta plugin.
Make your site Social:
Your strategy is not to get only social media share, but make your
site social too. Keep your site presence everywhere for example:
Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and any other social media site which is
relevant to your niche. For example, a Fashion, health and Facebook
niche blogger can target site like Pinterest. Add relevant widgets on your site and for newbies, here are some guide which you can refer to get started.
Quality link building over quantity backlinks:
Google recently taken down all the private blog networks
and links going out from it. If you are new to private blog networks,
in simple word a person/company creates 100 or more blogs on different
niche and start back linking which ultimately end up creating a link
farm.Now, you may not ignore our 101 tips to create quality backlinks, but also I suggest to focus more on quality of backlinks. When you are getting natural backlinks from relevant domain, it’s always a good and the best link. As I mentioned above, quality content is the best weapon which you have for post Panda SEO and quality stuff will help in getting quality links to your site. Needless to say Social media share also going to boost your ranking at great level.
Focus on your Analytics:
Couple of days back I was giving Panda recovery consultancy to one of popular Malaysian blogger and I realize he removed the Google analytics from
his blog, as he fears that Google uses analytic data to track and rank
your site and certainly this is a myth. Google ranking factors depend on
many metrics and having Google analytics or any other web stats program
is going to help and analyze your pages. Pages, which are not
performing well, you can always edit it and optimize for better
performance.Specially keep an eye on pages which have high bounce rate, low avg. time on page and high exit rate. Use content strategy and develop related content associated with it. Follow my bounce rate guide to decrease bounce rate and let the reader stick to your blog.
Duplicate Content Strategies:
Google is now very strict about duplicate content and I found them little dumb when handling duplicate content from real blog
and a copied paste blog. My suggestion is to follow a strategy which
will help you to fight those Auto RSS blogs. Here are few things which I
do and you should: Use RSS footer plugin and keep your feed as partial. Learn how you can report copied pages to Google and remove them from Search. Also, integrate TYNT script
which is going to be really helpful to get free back-links from people
who are copying a part of text, image or long sentence on your blog.Well, this is not all but start looking into all the factors which Google has implemented lately for example: Page layout algo, Page speed algo, private blog networks and so on. Traditional SEO of your site remains the same but now the major different is quality of your pages along with quality of over all domain. Here is an interesting guide from hubspot, which talks about things to avoid in post panda SEO strategies. Here are some more links from Web, which I have found useful and worth reading:
Honestly, it’s impossible to lay down all the strategy in a single post but I have tried marking all those important factor for SEO post panda, which everyone should start considering. I will keep updating new Panda SEO strategies and changes which you should bring on your blog to beat out panda. You can subscribe to my Email newsletter for instant updates.
Also, let me know what strategy you are following for SEO post panda world? If you find this post useful, don’t forget to give us Google plus and share it on Facebook.
10 SEO Blog Post Publishing Steps that Most Bloggers Forget
I see this time and time again.
As people get started with blogging, they think it’s as simple as clicking, “Add New Post,” typing up a few paragraphs, and clicking, “Publish.”
Then they hopelessly wait for views, comments, and tweets. No one comes. No one comments. No one tweets.
They do this three or four times and eventually write off blogging as, “not it’s all hyped up to be.”
After writing for Michael for a few months now, I can tell you that there are dozens of small blogging nuances that we work into nearly every post.
Here are 10 of the most popular SEO blog post publishing steps that bloggers tend to forget.
To figure this out, I do two things:
I want this post to rank for “seo blog post publishing steps” (click to see how it’s doing).
For more clarification on this tip, read this comment below.
When you type a headline, WordPress generates the post slug by placing every word in the headline into the slug. This clutters it up with lots of small words.
Instead, change your post slug to your primary keyword.
Default: IncomeDiary.com/10-seo-blog-post-publishing-steps-that-most-bloggers-forget/
Ideal: IncomeDiary.com/seo-blog-post-publishing-steps/
If blogging is a big portion of your business, start making videos for your posts, upload them to your channel, and embed them in the actual post.
If you’re still dabbling in blogging, consider embedding other peoples’ videos in your posts.
When a search engine robot hits a page, it reads the headline/title tag first. Then it reads the H2, H3, and H4 tags.
When you add subheadings to your content, proper HTML is:
Note: The headline/title tag should be automatically wrapped in As people get started with blogging, they think it’s as simple as clicking, “Add New Post,” typing up a few paragraphs, and clicking, “Publish.”
Then they hopelessly wait for views, comments, and tweets. No one comes. No one comments. No one tweets.
They do this three or four times and eventually write off blogging as, “not it’s all hyped up to be.”
After writing for Michael for a few months now, I can tell you that there are dozens of small blogging nuances that we work into nearly every post.
Here are 10 of the most popular SEO blog post publishing steps that bloggers tend to forget.
Table of Contents
1. Keyword Research
Before I write a single word, I figure out if it’s something that people are asking about. And if they are, I want to know if the internet is already saturated with that type of content.To figure this out, I do two things:
- Google’s Keyword Tool – I look up the words I believe people would search for to find the post I plan on writing.
- Google – I google those keywords to see the actual competition.
I want this post to rank for “seo blog post publishing steps” (click to see how it’s doing).
For more clarification on this tip, read this comment below.
2. Fine-Tuning the Headline
Here’s my formula for crafting headlines for list posts:[#][keyword][ curiosity-capturing phrase]For title tag SEO, your goal is to place the keyword as near to the front of the headline as possible:
- Top 10 Motivational YouTube Videos for Entrepreneurs
- 20 Great Google Chrome Extensions for Online Entrepreneurs
- 20 Best Designed Pricing Comparison Tables
3. Post Slug
The post slug is what shows up after the domain for every post or page.When you type a headline, WordPress generates the post slug by placing every word in the headline into the slug. This clutters it up with lots of small words.
Instead, change your post slug to your primary keyword.
Default: IncomeDiary.com/10-seo-blog-post-publishing-steps-that-most-bloggers-forget/
Ideal: IncomeDiary.com/seo-blog-post-publishing-steps/
4. Images
We all know that images grab your attention, break up the content, and supplement your ideas. But they also add great SEO benefits, as long as you follow these steps:- Save your images as [keyword-phrase.png] before you upload them to your site.
- Add alt text as [keyword phrase].
- Add title tag as [keyword phrase].
5. Relevant Videos
Google understands that adding a video to a blog post makes it a more complete resource. If they haven’t already boosting blog posts with videos, they will eventually.If blogging is a big portion of your business, start making videos for your posts, upload them to your channel, and embed them in the actual post.
If you’re still dabbling in blogging, consider embedding other peoples’ videos in your posts.
6. Subheads
Similar to images, subheadings break up the content and make blog posts easier to read. They also have big-time SEO benefits.When a search engine robot hits a page, it reads the headline/title tag first. Then it reads the H2, H3, and H4 tags.
When you add subheadings to your content, proper HTML is:
Subhead Level 1
Subhead Level 2
Subhead Level 3
.
So… Stop simply bolding and italicizing your subheads.
7. Interlinking
Another important step that most people forget is interlinking between posts.Before you publish a new post, read through it and try to find two-three opportunities to naturally link back to relevant posts on your blog.
This keeps both readers and search spiders on your site longer.
8. External Linking
Also, look for opportunities to link to other bloggers. The SEO benefits of external linking are unclear, but Neil Patel says:“Did you know that an external links going out to these high authority sites can boost your SEO? When search engines crawl your site and see a link and follow it to CNN or Huffington Post, they weight it as a positive. The trick is to find organic ways to link to these sites, like I did in this post.”Linking to other sites is also a good way to build relationships with other bloggers.
I’ve received two “thank you” emails from important people because I chose to link to their sites on IncomeDiary posts.
I linked to Pat’s site on: 10 Blog Posts that Made an Everlasting Impact on Me
I linked to Giancarlo’s site on: 10 Weird Ways Big Companies Make Money Online
Bloggers notice and appreciate backlinks.
9. Meta Data
Whether or not Google still looks at meta keywords is up for debate, but the meta description is definitely still used.In a search result, your meta description often shows up as the little blurb beneath the blue link. In writing your meta description, you need to keep three things in mind:
- It needs to be fewer than 155 characters so Google will display the whole description.
- It needs to include your keywords because Google bolds them in search results.
- It should be an actual sentence from the post because people look for that sentence once they arrive.
10. Call to Action
The final step is the call-to-action. As with any piece of marketing material, a blog post should be designed to get someone to do something.Here are a few popular calls to action:
- Comment – You can encourage people to comment by ending the post with a thought-provoking question or simply asking them to let you know what they think.
- Share – “If you liked this post, tweet it out.”
- Implement – I believe the best result of any blog post is for a reader to take your advice and implement it.
Now you have a choice. You can comment, share, or implement. I prefer if you implement, but I’ll appreciate all three.
5 Ways to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO
If
you have a blog, chances are you already understand the importance of
business blogging. But do you know how to optimize your blog posts to
make them more search engine friendly?
The truth is, many bloggers fail to take advantage of the enormous marketing potential of their blogs. In fact, a recent study by blogger.com shows that although roughly 60% of businesses have blogs, 65% of those blog owners haven’t even updated in the past year! By providing fresh, relevant content and performing basic blog post optimization, you can take advantage of the many benefits blogging offers
Here are six easy search engine optimization (SEO) tips to help get your blog noticed.
Too busy to keep up with your blog optimization? We’ve got you covered. OpenVine’s search engine optimization experts can help you get more prominent positioning on search engine results pages.
The truth is, many bloggers fail to take advantage of the enormous marketing potential of their blogs. In fact, a recent study by blogger.com shows that although roughly 60% of businesses have blogs, 65% of those blog owners haven’t even updated in the past year! By providing fresh, relevant content and performing basic blog post optimization, you can take advantage of the many benefits blogging offers
Here are six easy search engine optimization (SEO) tips to help get your blog noticed.
- Do your research. Keyword research is essential for on page optimization. Chances are you are naturally including keywords without realizing it simply by providing valuable content on a topic. However, there are a variety of tools and techniques for finding related keywords relevant to your blog post that you may not have considered. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool and semrush.com both offer great tools that allow you to find keywords related to your topic and even spy on your competition to see what words and phrases they are targeting to bring traffic to their sites.
- Utilize keywords throughout your post. Once you
have targeted a couple of valuable, relevant keywords, it is important
to place them where they will have the most impact for humans and search
engine crawlers indexing your content. Try to include them in the
following places:
- Title
- Headings and subheadings
- Introductory sentence
- Concluding paragraph
- Anchor text (text you hyperlink to other related pages on your site)
- Title tags and meta descriptions
- Optimize your images. Whenever you upload a photo to your blog, be sure to include keywords in the file name and fill out the alternate text field with a brief, keyword rich description of the photo.
- Reference others with links. When you mention another blogger or article in your blog post, include a link to the information you are referencing. Not only is it good blogging etiquette, but you may also get lucky and receive a link back. Quality links are a valuable commodity for any site looking to rank higher in search engine results pages.
- Give readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog. Include prominently placed RSS or Feed Subscription Buttons and offer viewers the ability to subscribe to your posts via email when possible. This allows your blog followers to have instant notification of your latest posts without having to periodically check your site for new content.
- Use social media to broaden the reach of your blog posts. As a small business, you may be utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or other social media sites to create connections with potential and current customers. Why not promote your blog content on these sites for even more web exposure? Free programs like Hootsuite make it easy to post links to your latest blog post on all of your social media sites with just a couple of clicks. You can even schedule your posts ahead of time!
Too busy to keep up with your blog optimization? We’ve got you covered. OpenVine’s search engine optimization experts can help you get more prominent positioning on search engine results pages.
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